math

A bust of Srinivasa Ramanujan in Kolkata. Asking for Signs # A fallen-away Catholic friend once told me that he wished the Bible predicted modern science. “If Jesus said, ‘Oh, by the way, matter is made up of atoms,’ then I would also believe him when he says he’s God,” he said. I don’t think we should expect Jesus to have said things like that. First, it wouldn’t have helped anyone in the centuries before it could be verified.

The game I knew in childhood as Sheep in Pens. I’ve got one math link and one meta-science link this month. Math: I’m excited about Ben Orlin’s forthcoming book of math games. Ben loves math and puns. He’s witty and perceptive. His post on being stuck is something I’ve included in work trainings to explain how data analysts should think. Science: Then there’s Bruce Charlton’s longform essay Not Even Trying: The Corruption of Real Science.

An interference pattern from a laser in a double slit experiment. As one of my college classmates said, when I entered college, I thought I knew 10% of all the math in the world. Four years and 17 classes later, I thought I knew 1% of all the math in the world. Then I went to grad school, and now I only think I know 0.1%. The more you climb, the better you can see all the mountains you haven’t visited yet.

Final board state of my first 19x19 game, still one of my closest. We both forgot to take the open point at P11. The pandemic hobby I’m proudest of is learning how to play Go. I knew that it’s the East Asian analogue of chess, and I knew that Google’s AlphaGo program finally beat the top pros a few years ago, but I didn’t even know the rules until summer 2020.